You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!

Spy Gadgets and Passive Voice

 I like using movies in class, especially when I teach the same students daily for a month. Since we are such a small class (I only have three students) it is hard to do group work or pair work, and many of our activities finish much faster than if I had a bigger class. As such every day we watch a bit of a film.

This session I have a spy theme, so we are watching Operation Stormbreaker. I like it because it stars a teenager and is easier for my students to understand than James Bond. Plus, it was under $7.00 online :) If you don't have the movie, you can use the clip below. If you don't have technological capabilities in your classroom, you can omit the movie part completely.

Today we worked on the Passive Voice and this is the clip we used to help practice.

Essentially, students were given a Gap Fill with a word bank. They were asked basic comprehension questions like:
1. The backpack has a ______________.
2. The zit cream ____________ anything metallic.
3. The fountain pen’s nib fires from ______ meters.

We watched the film twice, they shared their answers with one another, and then we shared them as a class.

Then we answered questions about the devices: 
Most of these questions were followed by a sentence starter and a sentence ending to be sure the students stayed in passive voice.
3. What ought you pack if you are going to jump out of a plane? The ... if you are going to jump out of a plane.
Answer: The backpack ought to be packed if you are going to jump out of a plane.

To make sure they understand that gadgets are awesome we read about the technology the police are using in Brazil during The World Cup (not the reading they use). The students find the passive voice used in the text and then comes my FAVORITE PART. They create their own gadget.

Students have a lot of fun with this. They (usually) like showing off what they created, and their classmates ask pretty silly questions. After we vote on the most interesting etc.

You can download the two pages of worksheets I use with my class at Teachers Pay Teachers. I am giving the worksheet away for free for the next seven days! If you do download it (and enjoy it) please leave a review!

Now that I've told you one of my favorite passive activities, I am wondering what is your favorite way to teach passive?